Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[LadyHonor]

I have and I'm not really sure how I got it. As I said it's been a long time since I've played that far into the game, but if I'm not mistaken I think it was caused by a mod. I don't recall which one it was tho.

[Qwinn]

Ah okay good, I can stop looking then. I don't see any way that could happen with my version of morrigan_main.dlg. If it happens with my Fixpack, hopefully someone will let me know.

 

I know someone mentioned this next one a few pages ago, and we were right about what triggered the random encounter. Yeah, it's REALLY obvious when it happens, smacked me right in the face first time I traveled on the world map after curing Eamon.

 

19. (v3.0) In the random encounter Roadside Field, which appears after you've revived Arl Eamon, you could click on any of the surviving Redcliffe Soldiers but the reply would come from only one of them.

 

Although I think the report on this thread said it was a refugee, not a soldier? Does it happen in more than one encounter?

 

Anyway, here's another:

 

20. (v3.0) "Jowan's Intentions": In this restored quest, if Jowan died during the battle defending the refugees, the quest would be stuck open in your journal and uncompletable forever. You will now be able to accurately report that you have determined he is no longer a threat in this circumstance.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

So I've been working on "Steal the Teyrn's Crown" for about 36 hours now. It is MASSIVELY improved over the previous version. Much better staging, over a dozen animations are used for the various methods of getting through, some sound work to make the get-them-drunk option quite a bit more entertaining, and I can't believe I forgot in v2.0 to fix giving money to the waitresses not actually deducting gold from you. I'm very proud of how it's turned out, I think it came out quite professional.

 

I am leaning *heavily* toward making the skill checks in this quest far more challenging, because they are so trivial at this point that I consider it broken. Consider the following factors:

 

1) The quest is unattainable until the Landsmeet quest has begun, so you *have* to be very high level to get it.

2) The quest is billed as "the heist of the century".

3) There are 4 different skills you can use to do the quest. Stealth requires Very High skill. Intimidate Medium. Persuade Low (to get the waitresses to distract for free). Poison Low.

4) And even if you can't manage any of those, you can always get them drunk for 5 gold.

 

Intimidate Medium *might* be challenging to overcome ... in Lothering. Persuade Low isn't even challenging in the Origin stories.

 

I've decided to up the Intimidate and Persuade checks to Very High (note that the Persuade check just saves you 3 gold), and poison to high, to match the Stealth skill needed. (Does anyone seriously not have 4 points in coercion by level 20?) And since even Very High Initimidate is trivially easy at that point in the game, I've also decided that using Intimidation, or killing anyone in combat during this quest, gets you Stealing Infamy in Denerim, triggering the two attacks by the Denerim guards in random encounters, the same thing that happens if you're caught trying to pickpocket a complete nobody in the street using the regular stealing skill. Why? Because I can't think of a single reason why using the regular stealing mechanic should trigger that, but brazenly robbing the teyrn's crown and letting everyone know who you are, with half the nobles in Ferelden sitting *right outside* and can see you leaving, gets no notice from law enforcement at all. Same as stealing from Lanaya's chest in the Brecilian Forest not getting you marked as a thief made no sense at all (and I fixed that too). If the "heist of the century" can literally *not possibly* result in any negative consequence at all, why wouldn't every other group of bandits capable of taking out the seneschal's guards not have done it ages ago? Why is it even considered a "heist", much less of the century? IMO, that's silly enough and immersion breaking enough to qualify as broken.

 

Again, even that consequence is still easily avoided now. Getting the crown with stealth (rank 4 needed), getting the guards drunk (5 gold, no skill needed), poisoning their drinks (poison rank 3 needed), or distracting them with waitresses (3 gold, or free with Persuade rank 4, but it's possible to make the guards suspicious so that that won't work) will not incur stealing infamy. Only brute forcing your way through with intimidation or combat will do so.

 

Can anyone come up with a good argument for why I shouldn't do this? Cause the way it worked - and let's face it, those last 3 methods DIDN'T work - in the vanilla game, the only options are Very High stealth, killing them, or intimidation. I can MAYBE see not causing Stealing Infamy for brazen unconcealed robbery when the options are that limited, but they're not limited at all anymore, I know of very few quests in any game with this many ways of handling it now that it's been fixed properly, which is why I'm comfortable with doing this. Whatever their intent can be gleaned from the way it is in vanilla, they had to know their other 3 intended methods didn't work, and having them work could totally change their intent. And it makes no logical sense, and trivializes the challenge of what's supposed to be (along with Slim's 4th stealth quest) the most challenging theft in the game, to leave that aspect the way it is at this point. That's my feeling. Yes? No? Whatcha all think?

 

EDIT: Oh, PS. Leliana and Zevran's stealth will now work. It didn't in vanilla or my v2.0. It only checked the PC's stealth capability.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Qwinn

[Thandal]

Hmmm. I'm seeing bug reports that female wardens could perform the ritual with Morrigan, but I'm not seeing how that can happen yet. Has anyone here witnessed this bug?

 

Well... I know how *I* manage to have a female Warden perform the DR with Morri:

Equal Love, or MRP Equal Love v2.0.

 

Yes, this can lead to... let's call them discrepancies, within the DA Keep World State(s) for DA:I. But the Warden in question doesn't actually appear in DA:I, so I get over the use of the "wrong" gender pronouns when s/he's being discussed. :cool:

[Qwinn]

Woohoo! Awesome news! I figured out how to fix the boon bugs in cutscene_postcoronation.dlg. (PyGFF is a nice little tool). I've been mapping the flag sets to the voiceover dialogue lines now, seeing what flags Anora sets and making sure Alistair sets them too. So won't need any crappy workarounds of talking to Alistair again after the cutscene. Yay! I was worried about this one.

 

EDIT:

 

Sooo nice to be able to work with cutscene_postcoronation.dlg. Found and fixed a couple of bugs aside from the big ones related to Alistair not setting the boon flags:

 

31. (v3.0) The epilogue slides regarding the following boons would only appear if granted by Anora - they would not appear if they were granted by Alistair: making the mages independent (mages), stripping the Howes of their lands and restoring Highever (human nobles), sending aid to Orzammar (dwarves) and making the PC the Bann of the alienage (city elves).

 

32. (v3.0) If the player chose a monument as their boon from Anora, the relevant plot flag was not set. I have no idea if this makes a difference anywhere, but it should now work the same regardless of who grants it.

 

33. (v3.0) If the player chose a monument as their boon from Anora, and anyone other than Loghain killed the Archdemon, Anora would dedicate the monument to Alistair even if he survived. This restores a previously inaccessible dialogue line where Anora dedicates the monument to Duncan and Riordan.

 

 

This also put me on the track of possibly fixing a bug that restores another epilogue for City Elves, but I'm not at the point where I can test it yet. Will of course let you all know once I can confirm my suspicions.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Has anyone else noticed an abnormal amount of crashing when loading a save game in the Denerim Market district? I sure am. I pretty much never crash anywhere else, but I crash there about 50% of the time. Happens more the closer I get to the gnawed noble tavern.

 

I have an idea or two to try that may help, but since it's going to be mainly guesswork, I'd like an assurance from someone else that it's not just me before I devote too much time to it.

 

EDIT: Okay, just found this thread (Starring Thandal!) so it's obviously not just me:

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1320088-dragon-age-crash/

 

So, let me expand on the issue a bit. The bug isn't caused by IA, and I don't think it's dependent on mods either actually (though, no doubt, they can certainly make it *worse*), since I was experiencing it the first time I arrived in Denerim before I'd applied any of my new fixes there. It's an extremely busy area graphics wise with more animations and concurrent creatures on screen than anywhere else I can think of.

 

I think I have identified an issue that, while not wholly responsible for the problem, seems to make it worse. It relates to the Dead Drops quest. They implemented that quest in a *very* strange way... each Dead Drop is represented by *two* placeables, one invisible and one a visible barrel. The first one was the one activated initially - hence the bug that the dead drops were invisible! - and when you made the delivery, the invisible one would get deactivated and the visible one took its place. These two placeables are in almost the exact same position, they almost completely overlap. Now, when I made the invisible one visible, I noticed something unexpected - *even when one of them was deactivated*, I would get weird very fast jittery graphic effects on the top of the activated one. Somehow the inactive placeable was still interacting and interfering with the graphics of the visible one. I didn't expect a deactivated object could affect graphics in game, but it definitely was the cause.

 

Now there was absolutely no good reason I can see for the two-placeable logic, and in fact I got the quest working better than original with just a single placeable that gets activated and deactivated as needed. The code is simpler and cleaner and pretty much impossible to break now (and I tried). Of the two original placeables, I use the first one that was originally invisible. The second barrel is no longer used, and I don't get jiterry graphic effects on the barrel anymore (possibly because in my version the second one never gets activated even once)..

 

Because it was likely causing graphic issues, I eliminated the second barrel from the area for v3.0. I don't think it'll stop the problem altogether, but like an errant mod, I think that jittering graphic issue was making it worse. I went back to a save prior to entering Denerim and while it didn't stop the crashing altogether, it seemed like it dropped from 50% of the time to 25% (small sample size still, of course). Can't hurt anyway.

 

(Seriously, of all the areas the devs could have stuck an easter egg of 9 cats running frantically around the place, they could've picked a less busy one...)

 

Here's how it's going in the Readme:

10. (v3.0) I experience an abnormal amount of low frame rates and crashing when loading a save in the Denerim Market District, and apparently I am not alone. It is a very graphically intensive area to begin with, and anything that can decrease that should help. To that end, I've removed a placeable related to the Dead Drops quest (a duplicate of the barrel) that due to my previous fixes for that quest is no longer necessary, as it almost (but not quite) perfectly overlapped with its duplicate barrel. This could cause some odd jittery graphic effects o the barrels that I am guessing at least made the issue worse, though not completely responsible for it. If others experience an improvement with this issue, or don't, let me know.

 

 

 

Now, Thandal, in that thread you said this:

 

"Denerim is the most crash-prone area of the game. It actually uses a method of handling where the Party is and how they interact with the environment that's significantly different from all other areas."

Could you elaborate on what you meant by this? I haven't discovered anything like that yet, might be important to something I run into.

Edited April 15, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Oh, and guess what, guys? Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition has been released! Beamdog used my fixpack as the basis for it, and I am in the credits as "Design Consultant"!

 

That's me, in the middle there!

 

http://i66.tinypic.com/b6byfl.png

 

 

Wooohoo! Here's hoping I get in Bioware credits sometime.

[Qwinn]

Denerim:

 

34. (v3.0) Habren Bryland, Habren's Guard and Habren's Servant were only supposed to be present in the Market District during the Landsmeet, but are instead there the entire game.

 

(Which thankfully will reduce the graphics load in the area a bit further.)

Edited April 15, 2017 by Qwinn

[squareinc]

Hey Qwinn

 

Just wanted to say congrats on the Planescape credit! I didn't know you did the fixpacks for that. I've been using it for years now. You seem to have made a lot of my childhood bugfree. Did you do any work on BG I or II? Congrats again and I'm looking forward for this DA fixpack :)

[Qwinn]

Thanks squareinc!

 

Nope, by the time I got around to modding, BG1 and BG2 had already been modded to a huge degree, and a pretty comprehensive fixpack had already been done. PS:T had hardly been touched though, I fixed everything everyone else had fixed with one third of v1.0 of my fixpack - and later versions did even more. In that game, me duplicating fixes that someone else had fixed comprised maybe 2% - seriously - of the final Fixpack.

 

I think that was primarily because unlike the other Infinity Engine games, you couldn't use the console to see the value of variables while running the game. That made modding significantly more difficult, and I think most folks lacked the patience to work the ways there are to get around that problem.

 

And yeah, a LOT of people have been saying they didn't know I had anything to do with the PS:T fixpacks... lol... I don't get it... it was called "Qwinn's Ultimate PS:T Fixpack"! Yet everyone just refers to it as the "PS:T Fixpack". I already saw 3 references to my Fixpack on the Steam reviews for PST:EE, and none of 'em said "Qwinn". Bleah! Heheh. I actually asked Beamdog to put "Qwinn" in between my first and last name in the credits, and they said they would, but they didn't. *grumble*

Edited April 15, 2017 by Qwinn